A few episodes into the current season of Farmer Wants a Wife, one of the contestants, Farmer Dean, abandons his uteload of prospective love interests at the gate to walk across the red loam soil to check his watermelon crop. Watching from my couch in Cowra, I had two realisations.
The reality TV show is in its 14th season in Australia and follows six farmers (all men; a brief experiment in putting up a female farmer has not been repeated) and 48 women. The two-part finale aired on Monday and Tuesday. Each farmer throughout the season has abandoned their houseguests for the farm, one running off camera to a cow struggling to give birth a calf, another to yank a cow out of a dam.
It lends a legitimacy to our nosiness: the show has tried to pull a fast one before.
In rural towns, everyone knows your business, for good or bad, and somehow everyone has a story about Farmer Wants a Wife. My own editor knows people in happy relationships approached to be on the show; our columnist Gabrielle Chan knows participants who have stayed together once their season ended.
Her work has helped develop an online course to build healthier on-farm relationships, where the lines between romantic partner and business partner are often blurred.
Back on my couch, I cover my face with my hands as pineapple and dragonfruit farmer Bert chokes up, telling the producers on the fourth-last episode that he plans to leave.
